The Israel Defense Forces said Thursday that it carried out airstrikes on Houthi military targets in Yemen, retaliating against the Iran-backed terrorist group for its repeated drone and missile attacks against Israel, according to multiple media reports.
“The IDF is operating decisively against the Houthi terrorist regime, while simultaneously intensifying strikes against the Hamas terrorist organization in Gaza, and will continue to act to remove any threat to the citizens of the State of Israel,” the military said in a statement to the Jewish News Syndicate.
“At press time, the results of the attack were still uncertain,” the Jerusalem Post reported, “but there were increasing indications that the Houthis’ defense minister and military chief were killed in the attack, as well as potentially others.”
Israeli fighter jets struck more than 10 Houthi military targets in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa, according to Arabic reports cited by the JNS. The IDF launched the strikes after receiving intelligence about a “gathering of senior Houthi figures from both the political and military ranks,” Israel’s Channel 12 journalist Amit Segal reported. The Houthis’ leader, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, delivered a televised speech as the strikes unfolded and “was apparently not a target of the strike,” according to Segal.
“The Houthi terrorist organization has been operating under the Iranian direction and funding in order to harm the state and its allies since the beginning of the war, undermining regional stability and disrupting global freedom of navigation,” the IDF statement added.
Israeli defense minister Israel Katz in a statement reiterated his warning to the Houthis. “After the plague of darkness comes the plague of the firstborn,” Katz said. “Whoever raises a hand against Israel—his hand will be cut off.”
The IDF’s strikes came hours after the military intercepted two drones launched by the Houthis that triggered sirens in Israel’s border communities of Bnei Netzarim and Naveh. They mark the latest escalation in a year-long back-and-forth between Israel and the Iran-backed Houthi terrorists. Since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel triggered a full-scale war, the Houthis have repeatedly launched missile and drone attacks on Israel in solidarity with Hamas, leading the State Department earlier this year to designate them a foreign terrorist organization. Israel began its counterstrikes in July 2024.
The Houthis have also attacked Israeli, American, and other international vessels in the Red Sea, including more than 100 between November 2023 and December 2024 alone, according to Reuters.
The IDF on Sunday also struck the Houthis’ ballistic missile sites and electricity sites in Sanaa after the terrorist group fired missiles at Israel. “The strikes were conducted in response to repeated attacks by the Houthi terrorist regime against the State of Israel and its civilians, including the launching of surface-to-surface missiles and UAVs toward Israeli territory in recent days,” the Israeli military said at the time.
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